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The Blog Squad - Part 26

We are a group of three book bloggers situated on different continents but brought together by our love for books and a penchant for talking about them. We’ve joined our forces to create a collaborative series of posts about book blogging and we hope you’ll enjoy the discussions.

I'm a book blogger. Where can I get prizes for giveaways?

Book bloggers have a range of options when it comes to prizes for Giveaways.

Author sponsored - Often authors will be happy to sponsor giveaways of their books just to get word out there!

Blog tours - If you participate in blog tours or blitzes there are often giveaways being held that are done by the tour company! All you have to do is participate and post the script.

Your own books - you can giveaway copies of books that you personally own

Gift Certificates/Vouchers - Amazon and Book Depository are very popular choices for certificates or vouchers since they ship to so many places and therefore giveaways can be done internationally. Winners can also opt for eBooks!

One of the main issues for giveaways will be shipping and whether or not to host the giveaway internationally. As a blogger that IS NOT from the USA I always find it hard to participate in physical giveaways because more often than not they won’t ship internationally and I totally understand! Shipping is EXPENSIVE!

None of these are really strange - it’s just what book bloggers do… We are pretty legendary when you come to think of it!

You can pay for the book and the shipping out of your own pocket (I’ve done that before). You can buy a new book to give away, but that’ll be expensive - maybe give away one of your own books you know you aren’t going to read anymore.

- You can use Book Depository, which has free shipping worldwide so you don’t have to worry about shipping costs (just the book price). Or you can even give away a BD voucher - I know those are really popular among bloggers, and it gives your winner the opportunity to choose the book themselves.

You can ask an author to sponsor a giveaway for your blog, but then you’re limited to that author’s books. Lots of bloggers do this and often the authors are happy to oblige since it gives them and their book some publicity, too, but personally I’ve never tried this route. I’ve been too nervous to ask an author ;)

- Book swag is cheap to ship, and granted you can get hold of some, it’s also a really cool thing to give away.

Currently, I have about six books I want to use for giveaways, but because shipping internationally is SO EXPENSIVE I’m gonna have to do them ‘local only’. It’s such a pain when you have the prize, but can’t afford to give everyone a chance to win it!

Have you ever hosted a giveaway?

I think that the most popular way to host a giveaway is to use Rafflecopter. It’s random, it’s easy and it’s cloud based!

I’ve hosted a few giveaways but mostly from blog tours that I’ve participated in. I’ve also hosted my own giveaway of an ebook that I reviewed where the author gave me a copy for a winner. That copy was won by my squad collaborator Uma!

Another popular way to do giveaways is on Instagram and it’s normally a follow/mention/tag/repost sort of system. I haven’t hosted any of these myself nor have I won any (yet!).

Giveaways are a great way to get people participating and involved on your site/social media and they are also a great way to give back.

If I’m hosting, I always use Rafflecopter, which is an excellent and easy-to-use giveaway ‘program’ where they pick a random winner for you, allow you multiple entry options for those entering, and give you a simple html code to paste in your post so that the giveaway widget shows.

I absolutely love using Rafflecopter. It’s so simple and effective.

If the publisher or author of the book you’re giving away isn’t sponsoring the book (they will sponsor it if it’s for a blog tour, for example) then I know bloggers usually pay for the book and the shipping out of their own pocket. I’ve done that before, but it is pricey. Another way to go is to ask the author or the publisher to sponsor the giving away of their book on your blog; I haven’t done that yet, but I know it’s a viable option.

For blog tours I’ve participated in, sometimes I never know who won because I don’t have access to the Rafflecopter set-up - only the publishers will know. In those cases I just set the thing up and watch it go. The one giveaway I ran completely by myself and with myself paying for the prize, Aneta @ Angelic Book Reviews won.

Have you ever won a giveaway?

I have actually been lucky enough to win a couple of giveaways! Mostly it’s for ebooks (there’s that international shipping thing again!) and they are either sent by email or downloaded online, but recently I won an awesome swag pack from The Last Magician blog tour!!! It was posted to me in a regular envelope and I was SUPER THRILLED to open my mail that day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve been lucky enough to win a few giveaways! My first ever win was a copy of this fantasy book that was hosted on Twitter; and the other books I’ve won have all been from South African publishers.

My most exciting win was when I won a copy of one of my most anticipated 2017 reads: Into the Water by Paula Hawkins. I think I had a mini heart attack when I got the news I’d won ;)

We hope you’ve enjoyed the latest in our series of discussion posts! Please talk to us and let us know YOUR answers below. What do you think of our responses? If you have any specific questions you’d like us to address in the future, please let us know in the comments section below.